MODERK GEOLOGICAL CHANGES. 77 



wlieu he crofted a bit there, and bade me look behind the first rock, which 

 he said had "kepid the shells when the tide gaed out." ''For/' added he, 

 ^'the sea has been over a' this, and up at the rocks yonder, for the auld road 

 gaed aboon fchera." I did as he recommended, and in the first hollow, behind 

 a mass of rock at the edge of a corn-field, found shells. 



The same ancient beach is distinctly observable on the Island of Little 

 Curabrae, a little farther up the Firth. On one end of this island an ancient 

 town is situated on the old beach. Here, as in Arran, the beach is flat 

 and narrow, very little raised above the present level, and immediately flanked 

 by clifis rising abruptly from it. 



As we advance farther up the Clyde, the same beach is seen on both 

 sides. All along from Gourock southwards, the road is formed upon it. In 

 some places it is a more shelf, but in others it attains considerable breadth, 

 and it is backed by most picturesque cavern-hollowed cliffs. These may be 

 seen very distinctly in the neighboui'hood of Wemyss Bay. On the north 

 side of the Clyde, between Helmsburgh and Dumbarton, the same sort of 

 beach may be traced; and there too, where the soft strata of the Old Red 

 Sandstone stand out in cliffs, on the upper side of the road, they are 

 hollowed out into water-formed caves. 



Three or four miles below Glasgow, and a mile or a mile and a half north 

 from the bank of the river, is a place called Garscadden. In Gaelic, Gar 

 means a Point, and Scadden, a Herring; and . Macfarlane, in his "History of 

 Renfrew," mentions this place as the Herring Yair; and there are some notices 

 in the statistical account of Renfrew of certain ancient fishings at Renfrew 

 Quay. The conformation of the country down there is corroborative of the 

 traditions of the sea having formerly stood at a higher level than it does now. 

 Indeed, in the flat grounds near Renfrew, various deposits, containing shells 

 of species not now living in our estuary, have been found. 



I shall now state the result of observations which have been made in and 

 around Glasgow itself. 



In Glasgow Green may be noticed two triangles, one about eleven, and the 

 other about twenty-six feet above the level of the sea. The Green did not 

 always present the appearance it does now. In 1810, a slight swell in the 

 river, or a heavy shower, laid the Low Green under water. A portion of it, 

 known then as the Calton Green, was so soft and irregular, and the ground so 

 swampy from numerous springs, that more than one-half of it was cut up into 

 open drains or ditches. The banks of the river contiguous to Peat Bog, 

 were rugged and so washed down with springs, that they were comparatively 

 useless; and the inequalities on the surface of the High Green were very 

 considerable. Provost's Haugh, or Flesher's Haugh was separated from the 

 High Green and King's Park, by a large ditch, or goit, and so strong were 

 the springs which issued from the banks, that numerous drains were necessary 

 to carry off the water to the river. 



But keeping in view the improvements which have been made on the 



